English Folk Poetry : : Structure and Meaning / / Roger deV. Renwick.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Penn eBook Package Archive 1898-1999 (pre Pub)
• VerfasserIn: Renwick, Roger deV.,
• Place / Publishing House: Philadelphia : : University of Pennsylvania Press, , [2016]; ©1980
• Year of Publication: 2016
• Edition: Reprint 2016
• Language: English
• Series: Publications of the American Folklore Society ; 2
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (276 p.)

Drawing on the long tradition of folklore study, Roger deV. Renwick examines three genres: traditional English folksongs, local songs of regional interest, and working-class poetry. In the span of time that extends from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, he finds govern world views underlying a large sampling of poems related by common language, imagery, or topic, and then shows how these world views relate to the everyday lives and beliefs of the poetry's makers and users. There is, in addition, a pattern of historical continuity that links the rural folksongs of the eighteenth century with the part-rural, part-urban local songs of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and with the fully urban working-class poetry of the present day. English Folk Poetry is an immensely important contribution to folklore scholarship in its examination of contemporary working-class poetry, in its approach to questions of tacit meaning, and in its exploration of the relationship of inferential meanings to real, everyday lives.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Preface -- Introduction: English Folk Poetry -- 1. “The Bold Fisherman” -- 2. The Semiotics of Sexual Liaisons -- 3. The Local Song in Yorkshire -- 4. An Ethos for A Regional Culture -- 5. Local Poetry and Modalities of Experience -- Epilogue -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index